Dysfunctionality
by TeresaAmaliaJane
Summary: A series of oneshots based on quotes from anywhere, not all romantic but all Jisbon, in a way. Chapter 10 quote-'Tears are the safety valve of the heart when too much pressure is laid on it.' Please R&R! Now complete.
1. Help

**Hey there! As it says in the summary, this is a series of Jisbon oneshots based on quotes that aren't specifically from the show, but from anywhere. I'm thinking maybe 10 or 15 chapters, if all goes well...t****hank you very much to Jisbon4Ever, who provided the first quote which is in italics at the beginning. I'm sorry it's so angsty, I couldn't think of a happier way to write it.**

**I think it's pretty clear that none of us own the Mentalist.**

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><p><strong>Chapter One<strong>

_Some people, they can't just ask for help. They don't know how._ -Dr Ray Langston, CSI

Mommy is sad today.

There is a picture next to her bed that she brings downstairs every morning. It's of her and Daddy and she puts it on the table while she eats her breakfast, but she never tells me why it's there. It's always back in her bedroom when she brings me home from daycare. I know, I've checked. I like looking at it. There are no other pictures at home where her smile is this big.

Today, she doesn't even eat breakfast, she just holds the picture in her hands and sniffs. I think she has a cold. I'm going to make her a Get Well card.

'Mommy, what time is daycare?'

'You're not going today, honey,' she says. 'You're coming to work with me.' I don't like that idea because today we're supposed to be doing fingerpainting, and I'm the best at that. But I think I need to be with Mommy today, because I'm the only one who can take care of her properly. She told me that.

I love elevators. You can pretend you're in a movie and any second the doors will open and the bad guy will shoot at you from behind a desk. Mommy is the witness I have to protect. When the doors open I leap out with my gun pointed, but there is nobody there and Mommy takes my hand.

'You have to be good today, okay?'

'Okay,' I say.

We walk together into where Mommy works. There are lots of people and computers and everyone is being quiet. Auntie Grace smiles at me and Uncle Wayne ruffles my hair, and I wish that they'd brought Finn to work too because then we can play games. Most of the time we are Special Agents with guns and badges, leading our units into burning houses to rescue the good guys and send the bad guys to jail. Once, I was a bad guy and Finn sent me to jail but I escaped by tricking the guards. Mommy was walking past and told me not to do that again.

I follow Mommy into her office and jump onto the couch. It's not very comfy to sit on, but it smells like home. Mommy takes some paper and crayons from the top drawer of her desk, and I draw pictures while she looks at her computer. The red crayon is my favourite and I usually draw cars but today I want to cheer Mommy up, so I draw us at the park. In the sky I draw a big smiley face to show that we are happy.

'Do you want to see my drawing?'

'Of course, honey.'

I hold it up and wait for Mommy to say that it's wonderful, like always. But she never does. Her smile goes away and she looks down at her hands. My picture falls to the floor.

'Mommy, what's wrong?'

'Nothing's wrong, honey,' she says after a bit but I don't believe her. 'Why don't you go see what Uncle Cho's doing.' I do what she says, but on the way out I look back and she has her face in her hands. I don't know what I've done.

Uncle Cho isn't at his desk, but his toy helicopter is and for a little while I am the policeman in it, saving the hostage and then jumping out just as the bomb goes off. When the story gets boring I put the toy back and suddenly I see a brown couch in the corner. When I sit on it, I almost sink into the cushions and I wonder why Mommy doesn't have this couch in her office instead. It's soft and squishy, and it smells nice. It smells like the tea Mommy drinks with her breakfast every day.

I lie down and almost go to sleep but suddenly Mommy is gently shaking me awake. Her eyes are red and puffy but her smile is back.

'We're going to be late,' she says.

We stop at a shop on the way so Mommy can buy some flowers. I get to hold them while she drives, and I try to count all the colours but I can't count that high. When the car stops we get out and she takes my hand again. There are trees and grass and so many strange grey blocks in the ground, and I try to read what's on them but we're walking too fast. Eventually Mommy slows down and we stop in front of one of the blocks. I don't have to read this one to know what it says. I've read it before.

'Hello Daddy.'

I wait for Mommy to say something too but she's looking at her watch. I think she looks silly, but she won't take her eyes off it and we stand there for a long time, waiting for something. Maybe, when it's the right time, Daddy will come back to life and Mommy will be happy again, like she is in her picture. But that doesn't happen, because when the time comes Mommy just lowers her arm.

'Sit down, honey,' she says, but her voice is all wrong. It sounds like it has pieces missing. The grass is wet but I don't care, and I don't think Mommy does either because she puts the flowers on the block and sits down with me. We both say nothing and the birds above us say lots of things. I wish I knew what they were saying. They might be telling jokes or stories, might be singing or fighting or playing games. I want to tell Mommy but when I look at her she is shaking quietly, and there are tears all over her face. I crawl over and sit on her lap, and she hugs me from behind. She is big and warm and all around me and we sit for a while without saying anything. Above us, the birds stop talking. We are in an ocean of green grass and blue sky, and Daddy's tombstone is the only thing keeping us above the water.

'Patrick?'

'Yes, Mommy.'

'I want you to always ask for help when you need it, okay? No matter what. Even if you're embarrassed, or if you're scared. _Especially_ if you're scared. Will you do that for me?'

'Okay.'

'Good.' Mommy kisses the back of my head, and suddenly I see something in the corner of my eye. When I look up someone is sitting on Daddy's tombstone, and he looks just like the man in Mommy's picture.

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><p>Teresa, you are sad today.<p>

You surround your son like a blanket, your hair longer, your once beloved mask lost in translation from cop to parent. Motherhood has given you back the softness that childhood deprived you of, and it's made you even more beautiful. Tender and strong all mixed together in a delicate compilation of life. It makes me slightly happier to know that there is light in your face, even though there is none in mine, and I wonder if that's where you got it. If maybe, as we lay there four years ago in a bloody fountain of red smiles and regret, some of the life that eluded me found you. Maybe, in the right light, your eyes are blue.

Sweet, loving little Patrick may have my name and my DNA but I am not his father, not really. A real father chooses happiness over revenge. A real father stays. You never told me you were pregnant, but I knew, of course I knew. Tuned in for almost a decade to your thoughts and your secrets, acting out my part in what both of us assumed to be a strange, eratic understanding but what turned out in the end to be love. Reaching its unveiling after a case that hit home, stammering for reason in your apartment but no reason seemed important enough. What you never knew was that all the logic in the world would not have been enough to send me home. One short night of you in my arms, a few weeks of denial and two months later I was dead.

You sit here with Patrick on the wet grass and though he looks a little older than he did last year, nothing has changed. The image of your numb stare, our last conversation, still haunts me more vividly than a red smiley face ever did. All I want to do is hold you and Patrick, feel your wonderfully human warmth and tell you I'm sorry. For trying to be a hero, for trying to handle it all on my own. For thinking that I didn't need help. I'm sorry that your son reminds you of me every time he speaks, and that one side of your bed is cold at night. I'm sorry that I never caught Red John, that I never let you in or kissed you at work and I'm sorry that I never told you I was sorry.

I'm too far away to hear your murmurings into Patrick's ear, but suddenly you pull yourself to your feet and fierce panic tears through me, blind and painful. I want to take you by the shoulders and beg you to stay, please let me watch you live for just one moment more. One more fragment that will sustain me until next year. But I can't, because all you see is air and all you hear are the birds. In your world of distinction, I do not exist. I am only a memory of sorts, trapped by my own grave, sitting on my own tombstone, voiceless, lifeless.

Don't go.

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><p><em>Don't go.<em>

I don't know what it is that makes me slow down, but I don't fight it.

'Mommy,' I say, 'can we stay for a few more minutes?' Mommy turns to look at me, surprised, and nods after a little bit.

'Sure, honey.'

We turn back around, and Daddy smiles at me through his tears.

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><p><strong>Thanks for reading, please review! If you've got any good quotes, it'd be much appreciated. I can't write these without quotes... <strong>

**TAJ :)**


	2. Temptation

**Hello again. Thank you to everyone who reviewed Chapter 1, you made my week. Also, thanks so much to In The Name, who provided the following quote. I had a lot of fun writing it, I hope you enjoy reading it.**

**I'm going to lie and say I own the Mentalist.**

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><p><strong>Chapter Two<strong>

_Temptation is a woman's weapon and a man's excuse - _H.L. Mencken

Lights, music, and the show began.

Jane crossed his legs in his seat as the first of the dancers emerged, one by one, from behind the curtain. Their costumes ranged from highly suggestive to almost non-existent, pink and green scraps of material that hid only their modesty. Hips swaying, smiles alluring and they each claimed their own dazzling catwalk, the music keeping in time with their steps. At the end of each runway there were poles awash with glitter and stretching to the roof. The lights overhead began to flicker dramatically, egging the shameless crowd on to a chorus of whoops and wolf whistles.

'This is disgusting,' Van Pelt commented in Jane's earpiece.

'Sure is,' he replied into his microphone, although he doubted Grace could hear him over his surroundings. He'd always hated these clubs. Drunken chauvinists scrambling for that moment's attention, for a glance or a touch that would satisfy their greed and keep their dreams of sexual ecstacy just a fraction from impossible. Women of the past spent their whole lives fighting for equality, only to see their grandchildren throw it all away. Pieces of meat to starving animals. It made him sick.

Atop the platform closest to him, one of the dancers had reached her pole and twirled slowly around it, hips exaggerated. She wore green, but only barely; her actions were confident, but Jane was near enough to see the nervousness in her eyes. Understandable, of course. After trying for so many years to hide herself away, Lisbon would naturally find this kind of parading galaxies from her comfort zone.

He'd never seen so much of her in his life, and with that thought came the knowledge, sudden and powerful, that they were headed for a dangerous place. Everything Jane knew about Lisbon fell apart to mere assumption, and everything he assumed fell apart to theories he didn't trust. In front of him was not a cop, but a red-blooded woman and he knew it had always been in her but was shocked by its presence. He tried to steady himself with thought of the case they would close tonight, as a result of this. But then she forced her back up roughly against the pole, and Jane forgot how to think.

They had to establish a connection, he vaguely remembered. That was what she'd called it; for everything else to happen conceivably, they had to first connect. As if on cue, Lisbon glanced over with a smile he'd never seen her give to anyone, and turned so that her back was to him. Her hands clasped around the pole, she slid down it and Jane fumbled in his pocket for a twenty dollar note. She reached the floor and laid on her back, one sparkly heeled foot gliding gently back up the pole and her dark hair falling in gushing waves over the edge of the stage. They were only inches apart now, so close that Jane could see every brush of mascara dripping from her eyelashes. Upside down, she seductively opened her mouth and he slid the rolled-up money between her teeth.

Lisbon bit down on the flimsy paper, smiled, and in one sudden movement she'd flipped onto her hands and knees, the money gone. Leaning forward, she ran her tongue slowly up one side of Jane's face and his vision went white. As a wall of drunken cheering surrounded them, he recalled that she'd told him to act lustful and bleakly hoped that it was his acting skills doing the job already. If so, he really should be in theatre because the primal inferno was burning through every inch of his skin, raging in his eyes, challenging his control over his body. As her tongue left his cheek, Lisbon pulled back slightly and flashed him a grin so dazzling it stole all his air. As she stood, Jane understood for the first time what it would have been like for his past clients to watch him perform his psychic act. There were fifteen dancers on that stage, but it was Lisbon's performance.

She turned her attention to a group of young men to his right, and their rapacious faces infuriated him. Jane desperately wanted to intervene and shield her from their undeserving gazes. They had no business looking at her like they did. But neither, he realised, did he. Pretending or not, by being here he was crossing the line she'd so boldly drawn between them and it could hardly be redrawn. The thought consumed him and suddenly Jane found that he couldn't look at her, so allowed his gaze to subtly wander across to the corner of the room. Standing in its shadows, he knew, was the club owner Darren Marsh. Jealous and insolent, guilty of shooting anyone who got a little too close to his dancers. By the night's end he would be knee-deep in their trap.

Time had passed quickly, he supposed; it felt like only ten minutes but already the dancers were retreating. One last touch and they stepped back onto the main stage; one last smouldering gaze, swing of the hips, and the curtain claimed them for its own. The crowd didn't like this at all, booing boisterously; the group of men near Jane began a chant of an increasingly erotic nature. No longer special, no longer satisfied. The lights calmed down, the music changed and Jane meandered through the crowd to the bar. Choosing the seat furthest away from the stage, he ordered a drink from the bartender and sipped it sparingly, calculating. It would take Lisbon ten minutes to change, give or take, a bit longer to slip discreetly back into the room… but barely a minute had passed before there was a voice in his ear, warm and close.

'Make sure Marsh sees us.'

He nodded and felt her fingers thread through his. Standing, he abandoned his drink and as she led him slowly out of the room he cast a sideways glance at the dark corner near the stage. Jane was too far away to see Marsh's face but body language proved to be enough. His sudden rage was almost luminous. Jane turned to inform Lisbon but then realised with a start that the reason she'd taken so little time was because she was still in her costume. It would add to the fantasy of their affair, he supposed, and for a moment the strange lust again took control. For a moment, he took in the curve of her upper legs and wondered what it would be like to… no. He couldn't. It was all for a case, for God's sake. It wasn't her, this playful seduction, only a character and it would be gone tomorrow. He told himself that, again and again, forcing his eyes elsewhere as they walked. Somewhere along the way she'd let go of his hand and they reached the female toilets, an 'Out of Order' sign attached. Lisbon pushed open the door.

'Nice work, Boss,' said Cho as they entered the room; beside him, Rigsby took a millisecond to digest Lisbon's appearance before nailing his gaze to the floor. She ignored both of them and spoke into the microphone hidden in her costume. Jane couldn't possibly guess where she'd fit the thing.

'Van Pelt, do you have a visual on Marsh?'

'He's headed your way,' Jane heard in his earpiece. Grace was upstairs, viewing the unfolding of events through the security cameras. 'One minute, give or take.'

'Can you see a gun?'

'Not yet.'

'Right.' Lisbon leant against the bathroom sink, her back to the mirror. 'So now we wait.' She crossed her arms in an obvious attempt to cover herself up, uncomfortable with the costume in such bland surroundings. Jane too was uncomfortable. He watched Cho and Rigsby hide themselves in the first two cubicles, but no matter how much he concentrated on the shine of their Glocks, Lisbon's presence continued to blind him. The mirror gave her a clone; twice as much skin and twice as much confusion, because she was Lisbon again, and yet the outfit claimed otherwise. His hand felt scorched from where she'd held it. One side of his face was numb.

'Jane,' she said. When he looked over she was holding out his scrunched twenty dollar note, her eyes seeing past him. Jane slowly crossed the room and took it from her, unsure of whether he really even wanted it back. But before he could wonder where it had been, Van Pelt spoke up.

'Uh, Boss.' There was tension in her voice. 'Marsh is fifteen seconds away, and there's no sign of any weapon.' The uneasiness was momentarily lifted from Jane as he realised the cause of Grace's concern. If Marsh simply waltzed into the room unarmed, he would find one of his dancers standing with a stranger. Doing nothing at all sexual, their cover blown. He would make some excuse about checking the plumbing, and then he would walk out. For the arrest and charge to be justified, he had to draw his gun, and he had to do it before he opened the door.

'Ten seconds.'

Jane met Lisbon's gaze then, and he could see in her eyes the same beginnings of panic that he felt in his. They looked over to the door simultaneously, and in the silence he heard the dull thump of feet in the hallway. Rhythmic, haunting. With every step Marsh delayed pulling his gun, their undercover act fell apart more and more, and he grew safer.

'Five.'

Jane wasn't sure why he did it. Time had slowed again, each second reluctantly passing in a haze of tension and uncertainty and the rising need to do something, anything. His gaze snapped back onto Lisbon and as she met it he stepped quickly forward, before he could stop himself. Taking her face in his hands, he shoved away his conscience and pulled her mouth to his.

At first, Lisbon froze in shock, but the sound of the doorknob turning reached them and suddenly she was returning the kiss. And she held nothing back. Jane felt her fingers tangle in his hair as her tongue collided with his, probing his mouth, searching for the satisfaction they'd both been hurtling toward… as he lifted her up onto the sink, she wrapped her legs around him and wrenched his jacket from his shoulders, allowing it to fall to the floor. With the fresh position, her face was slightly higher than his but it only added to the fantasy, the pleasure. And the blazing lust returned to rage through them both, driving them on not with anger but with desire… there was nothing in between their bodies, she was everywhere, she was all he could taste, all he could breathe…

The cubicle doors suddenly flew open behind them and Cho and Rigsby bore down on a shocked Marsh who had, evidently, finally revealed his gun. Jane heard the urgent tone of their shouts, but it seemed an easily won battle because a few moments later there was the clatter of metal to the floor and the click of handcuffs.

Slowly, gently, he broke the kiss and observed the sink in front of him as Lisbon reclaimed her legs. He couldn't look at her, though he wanted to; confusion and embarrassment wound through him and he found that his mask, once so reliable, now failed to camouflage these emotions from either of them. Awkwardly, Jane took a step back and her heels touched down on the floor once more. In the mirror, he watched Cho push a submissive Marsh out the door without a backward glance. Rigsby's eyes flickered to the back of Jane, still intimidated by Lisbon's costume. His words sounded like they were choking him.

'Good job, um, guys.' And then he was gone too.

Jane turned around to stare blankly at where Rigsby had been, and the tension returned with a new, more painful level of intensity. Van Pelt was silent in his ear, either because she'd left or because she was in shock. He was all too aware of Lisbon's presence beside him; the sudden lack of her warmth had turned his skin to ice. But only where she'd touched, which was basically everywhere. How had they come to this stilted uneasiness, when they'd begun the night so adament that nothing would change?

After a long moment, Lisbon cleared her throat.

'Well.'

He couldn't find any words, even with her simple monologue as the prompt, partly because his tongue was swollen from her touch but mostly because his mind was swollen too. In the process of avoiding her conversation and her gaze, he spotted his jacket crumpled on the ground and bent to pick it up. Jane's intentions were to put it back on, establish some sort of control over the situation. But then Lisbon shivered beside him and the image came into his head of the drunken horde of men she'd seduced, their gutter-worthy comments and their shameless grabs for her skin. She said nothing as he dropped the jacket over her shoulders, nor did she speak as he headed for the door.

Jane didn't like that she, after advertising herself for half an hour, still possessed the presence of mind to do her job. _He_ hadn't been able to utter a single word since she'd made her beeline for him on that stage; his deniably artificial lust had taken the reins and apparently decided that words just got in the way. Underneath the composure, was Jane actually just another greedy male, another chauvinist, in disguise? No matter his morals or his dignity, did the world consist only of redblooded men and oblivious women? He was frustrated enough to believe it.

But as he turned to close the door behind him, Jane caught Lisbon's reflection in the mirror. She'd drawn his jacket significantly more tightly around her, and as he watched she pressed her nose to the material and inhaled deeply, her eyes fluttering closed.

Deep down under Jane's skin, hope for the male species came alive.

Perhaps temptation was a two-way street.

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><p><strong>Thanks for reading, please R&amp;R! Again, if you've got a good quote for Chapter 3, sharing is caring.<strong>

**TAJ :)**


	3. Beauty

**Hello again! Sorry this is a week late, a) I had a very hard time choosing a quote from all the wonderful suggestions (thank you!) and b) I wanted so badly to get this right. Thank you to Anara who provided this quote, I'm not sure if the story is actually directly relevant to the quote but I hope you like it!**

**I don't own the Mentalist. Never have.**

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><p><strong>Chapter Three<strong>

_"A thing of beauty is a joy for ever."_ -J. Keats

She knows exactly where it will be. From under the bed she drags out a large box, its edges scratching against the floorboards and the book observing her silently from the top of the pile. Her fingers clasp around the familiar binding and it falls open habitually to the page she's after. For a moment, as always, she pauses to wonder how her whole life could possibly be defined on this one page. A beginning, a middle and an ending.

Her fingers brush over the first daisy, the petals frail under her touch and with a jolt she is sixteen again.

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><p><em>Teresa's father again bellowed her name, and again she prayed for the lock to hold. Through the door, the ceaseless pounding of his fists had numbed her back but the pain found other ways. It was an ache in her bruised cheek, it was a stinging in her eyes from tears she thought she'd exhausted. Through her bedroom window, the night was black; Teresa knew his rampage was loud enough to wake up the boys, but fear had stolen her voice and he wouldn't listen to her anyway. He never did. <em>

_It took Teresa a few long seconds, encased in her own panic, to recognise the silence. Slowly, she stood on shaky legs and wondered if, in her father's drunken stupor, he'd forgotten the cause of his anger and stumbled away. It was a hope that sparked for the briefest of moments, before a deafening bang shook the door and she threw herself backwards, screaming. Teresa reached her closet in a matter of seconds; shutting herself in, she felt for the light switch and sank to the ground in a mess of emotion. She could still hear him shouting through two doors. She could still hear her heart._

_Subconsciously, she reached beside her for the leather scrapbook she'd owned since she was ten. It knew her intentions and opened to the last used page, where there was a photograph and a single daisy pressed between the paper. Teresa's mother smiled out at her and a familiar grief seeped to the surface, lingering for just a moment on her skin. But the smile also enveloped her, soothing much of her fear and fading her father's yelling to irrelevance. _

_The daisy was as beautiful as on the day her mother had picked it. Yet Teresa wanted more than anything to toss the flower out her window, let it float and dance along the breeze and not be bound by such a thing as life._

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><p>As the second daisy grazes against her skin, so do the fragments of a day she still can't quite make herself believe. Even now, almost a decade later, she wonders if she really just imagined it all along; after all, the story has never been sad enough to pass for reality. Death should have claimed more than one life, but it didn't. It should be pain and anguish that haunts her, that stares up at her now from the bloodied flower. But it's not.<p>

She doesn't really know what it is, but it's always given her hope.

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><p><em>Their cars gathered in the dusty distance like a swarm of vultures, thirsty for the story they would inevitably find. As the black spots grew into definite shapes, Lisbon dazedly knew she should prepare for their questions but realised that she had no hope of answering them. No hope of writing their articles. Not when the only thing she recalled of the past hour was the blood. <em>

'_How do they always know where we are?' she asked Cho, but it was a rhetorical question and he knew it. _

'_I'll handle them,' he told her and she smiled in gratitude before abandoning him there on the front line, slightly guilty. Tomorrow, she would buy him a drink. Tomorrow, she would buy everyone a drink._

_He was exactly where she'd left him, just as blank, just as numb. Just as drenched in blood, patches of sickly red that stained his clothes and darkened his hair and shone like glass in the sunlight. Lisbon went to catch his eye but he'd closed them, looking for all the world as if he were asleep. Fitting, she supposed, because whatever darkness he'd dreamt of on his couch couldn't have been far from this._

'_Jane,' she breathed, and he opened his eyes but didn't seem to see her. Behind Lisbon came the thud of car doors as the reporters arrived, and she swallowed hard; she had to get him away, anywhere else but in their firing line. She didn't use words or expressions; she simply grasped onto his hand and gently tugged. Dazedly, he began to follow her. They couldn't escape through her car-it was now trapped in the midst of the media-so she pulled him around the side of the house and prayed that the body had been removed._

_It hadn't. Through the discreet side door, two local policemen wheeled out a half-open body bag on a stretcher and Jane's grip on her hand tightened, his fingers beginning to shake. Her eyes fell on the body of John Reginald, on his wide, staring eyes and the three bullet holes in his heart, and her own grip tightened too. It wasn't anger or sadness that filled her, but a morbid sense of closure; after a lifetime of painting red smiles for other people, Reginald at last had his own. _

_Lisbon led Jane past Rigsby, Van Pelt, some more policemen and the old farmhouse quickly fell behind them. She didn't stop to consider where they were going, only that they were going and with every exhausted step the pain seemed to melt away a little more convincingly. When she couldn't hear the media anymore, she stopped; they sank to the grass with the old fence against their backs, silently taking in the scene. From here, Lisbon could see no person or car and the house looked as if it were on a postcard. Quaint and cosy, alive in the lushness of the countryside. She couldn't imagine something so bloody and dark happening in such an innocent place. Then again, this morning she couldn't have imagined something so bloody and dark happening at all._

_Jane had lost his words the moment Reginald's body crumpled to the ground. Lisbon didn't know when he would find them again, but knew he would be furious with her when he did. After all, they were her bullets in Reginald's chest. Her anger, perhaps not so great or dangerous as his but enough to pull the trigger, so much more than enough. She'd stolen his seven-year tirade. And she expected hatred, as cold and frightening as she deserved. It was a moment Lisbon dreaded, but she found that enduring his silence was worse. Glancing down at her hands, she noticed for the first time that her fingers were streaked with his blood, and she wondered whether this was how it had always been. His life, hers. Not quite so dark, of course, but just enough to keep her trapped there beside him until the sun came out. If it ever did._

_It took her many minutes to notice that the ground was dotted with daisies, and a memory poured from her before it could be suppressed. _

'_When I was a kid,' she began, 'my mother would always tell me this story about a little girl who had her own garden.' Jane kept his eyes on the house, but interest flickered on his face and she took that as her cue. _

'_In this garden, there was every flower you could think of except for daisies. And they were her favourite.' Lisbon spoke as if to a six-year-old, baffled by herself. What was she doing, telling childish tales to a man who'd just been through his darkest hour? But she couldn't stop. 'The little girl wanted daisies in her garden more than anything, because without them the garden wasn't complete. She knew that there were flowers in the woods across town, so one day she went and picked a bunch of wild daisies, almost bursting with excitement when she thought of how beautiful the garden would look with the flowers planted there.' Lisbon gently pulled a daisy from the ground, her fingers smearing the petals dark red._

'_But on her way home she spotted a man who looked sad, and when she asked him what was wrong he told her that his sister was sick. The little girl felt so sorry for the man, so she gave him one of her daisies to cheer him up. Then she saw a little boy who was sad because his dog had ran away, so she gave him a flower too.' Lisbon twirled the stem in her hands. 'The further she walked, the more sad people she met and the more daisies she gave away, until she was nearly home and there were none left to plant in her garden. This made her sad, but then she looked behind her and all she could see were flowers and people smiling. And she realised that her garden didn't need daisies to make it beautiful, because it already was.'_

_As her words fell to silence, Lisbon found herself almost scared of glancing over to Jane. Hoping beyond hope that her mother's story had dented his numbness, partly because that numbness looked terrifying on him and partly because she had nothing else to offer. What he needed was childhood comforts, a hug and a warm blanket of reassurance to keep away the cold. But she wasn't a mother._

'_What does it mean?' he asked suddenly, and it took her a moment to register that he'd spoken. Little by little, a cautious relief seeped into her._

'_Well, I always thought it was about giving,' she answered honestly. 'But now, I think it means that sometimes things can be incomplete and complete, at the same time.' She was brave enough to face his gaze now, wondering if he understood the true meaning of her words and shocked by the glint in his eyes. _

'_It's an oxymoron,' he informed her with a smirk. _

'_Shut up, it took me twenty-five years to think of that.' And his laugh in response was one of the most beautiful things Lisbon decided she'd ever heard._

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><p>She spent months and months braced for the hatred, but it never came.<p>

As she comes to the last daisy, she can feel a soft smile creeping over her. The flower is the newest on the page, and unlike the other two it isn't a symbol of death. It does not bring forth flashes of pain or fear, but the happiest and simplest memory of the three. A brief moment in time she keeps with her always, in case one day she can't remember anything else.

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><p>'<em>Checkmate!' Della's exclamation echoed around the hospital walls as she set down her bishop. Leaning back against the frame at the end of the bed, she clapped her hands together in triumph.<em>

'_You know I just let you win, right?' Teresa hadn't done anything of the sort and was immediately greeted with a piercing stare, far too knowledgeable for a five-year-old. She could almost see the gears of Della's brain ticking over. _

'_You're lying, Mommy,' she announced after a moment, and Teresa sighed. She was far too much like her father. But before she could voice this observation, her stomach suddenly thumped from the inside and immediately her words fell away. Something told her that by now she ought to be familiar with the sensation, but try as she might her heart still leapt every time._

'_What is it?'_

'_Come here, honey,' she murmured and the bed creaked softly as Della scrambled across. Taking her tiny hand, she laid it on her stomach and together they waited. Teresa watched her face as the baby kicked again, heard her gasp and smile as the wonder washed across her features. They met each other's gaze and for not the first time Teresa was startled by the colour of her daughter's eyes. Not simply blue, but the most beautifully pure of blues; she'd always imagined that this had been the true colour of Della's father's eyes, before hatred and pain had irreversibly stamped out the innocence._

'_I hate to interrupt,' smiled the nurse in the doorway, 'but this came for you just now.' Teresa went to ask why anyone would send anything if there was nothing to celebrate or condole. But then she realised what the nurse held in her hand, and slowly but surely her smile spread into a grin. She'd convinced him that sending their current murderer to jail was significantly more important than being beside her for a few meaningless tests. But he found ways, like he always did._

_On the bedside table, the nursed placed a single daisy._

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><p>'You shouldn't be sitting down, you know. You'll get creases in your dress.' The voice pulls Teresa out of her recollective daze, and she glances over to Minelli in the doorway.<p>

'My legs were tired,' she reasons with a smirk and he sighs in exasperation, before his gaze falls to the scrapbook in her hands. He's seen it before, all too aware of what it means to her and he glances down at his hands.

'For what it's worth,' he says after a moment, 'I think any mother would be proud of you today.' His words sweep through her warmly, and she lends him a smile.

'Thanks, Virgil.' As she closes the scrapbook, movement flutters from behind Minelli and two children all but leap into the room, shining with anticipation. A second after them steps Grace, predictably stunning in her simple green gown.

'Mom, you look like a princess!' Della exclaims, her blonde curls somehow restrained into a soft ponytail.

'So do you, honey,' Teresa smiles, as little Oscar clambers onto the bed beside her. 'And _you_,' she sighs, 'what have you done to yourself?' She straightens his tie and attempts to pat the dirt off his suit. He grins up at her with the amount of excitement only a three-year-old could manage.

'I saw Daddy,' he whispers, like it's a secret.

'I bet he doesn't look as handsome as you,' she replies and he giggles.

Minelli extends a hand and she takes it, pulling herself back onto her precarious heels. While she still fights for balance, Grace steps forward and smoothes the back of Teresa's dress, arranging the train, checking the daisy pinned to her hair. When today is over, she will open her scrapbook again and the flower will adopt its rightful place beside the other three. Four symbols of life, silent upon the page and yet they tell her everything.

'How are you feeling?' asks Grace. Teresa goes to reply that everything's fine, but then Minelli checks his watch and straightens suddenly.

'Time to go,' he announces, and as Del and Oscar almost bounce towards the door Teresa's stomach drops from under her. Suddenly, her calmness is replaced with the powerful urge to turn and run in the opposite direction, stopping for nothing until she falls off the face of the earth and the world stops looking for her.

'Terrified,' she manages to say. Grace lends her a knowing smile, and Teresa recalls the near panic attack Grace experienced at her own wedding. It doesn't help the situation at all. As they slowly make their way down the hall, she remembers how her and her mother used to pass the time by dreaming about her wedding, about how one day she would meet a man who made everything else fade away. It had all sounded lovely back then, but her mother had forgotten to mention how utterly frightening the concept was, of giving a little bit of yourself to someone. Teresa's hands begin to shake of their own accord.

'Stop worrying,' Minelli says beside her.

'Easy for you to say,' she mutters under her breath, but then he holds out his hands and she sees that he's shaking too. Wordlessly, she clasps onto his arm and suddenly Grace halts the procession from the front; gently, Della tugs Oscar into his position and the world slows to a standstill. In the silence, Teresa stubbornly suppresses her urge to throw up, every inch of her visibly shaking now, almost painfully. As the piano begins its wordless speech, the doorknob turns from the other side and she takes her last deep breath.

The first thing she notices is the room, its transformation hitting her like a hurricane. Yesterday it was a living room, but today it hangs in soft cascades of white and green, the colours dotted with daisies in the most beautiful of ways. Behind the priest, the glass doors open outward to a view she is still not used to after nine years.

The second thing she notices are the people, the groomed faces which lay their gazes on Grace, then Del and Oscar and then on her with a hush. A number of faces find her through the rest; she sees her brothers, Tommy and Pete and their families, Jim whose fingers drift over the piano keys. She sees Cho and Rigsby in the front row, Rigsby's awe and Cho's usual indifference painted over with something she doesn't recognise. Teresa supposes that their familiar faces should provide at least some comfort, chase at least a little of the fear away, but she only shakes even more.

But then she sees him.

He stands beside Danny, looking for all the world like he is calm but she's long since learnt to see past it. As their eyes meet Teresa watches him change, watches the doubt shrink and the light find his eyes and that beautiful smile crash over him, sending a warmth over her skin. Suddenly, they are the only two people in the room, and she realises that this is how it has been all along. His life, hers.

And she stops shaking.

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><p><strong>Thank you for reading, please review! Also, quotes?<strong>

**TAJ :)**


	4. Kiss

**Hello, here's Chapter 4! Thank you very much to Kuhlama for providing this quote. It had such a quirky feel to it, but I've used it for something a bit more serious...I hope you'll forgive me for that :) I know nothing about law and order, so forgive me for that as well, I made the details up. Thank you to everyone who reviewed Chapter 3, it was great to hear your thoughts. I hope you'll do the same for this one :) **

**The Mentalist doesn't belong to me, and I hate that fact. **

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><p><strong>Chapter Four<strong>

_A kiss is a lovely trick designed by nature to stop speech when words become superfluous. _-Ingrid Bergman

'Where's Jane going?'

It was quite a long time before Lisbon heard Rigsby's words, before she glanced across to the empty seat and heard the creak of the courtroom door behind her. By the time she turned her head, he'd gone, and she sighed. Only ten or so seconds ago he'd been under her watchful gaze, calm as ever, at least on the surface. But if she'd learnt anything from a decade in his wake, it was that surfaces really didn't mean that much at all.

'I'll find him,' she announced to no-one in particular.

For all his history of evasion, he wasn't that hard to find; the grand old hallway was all but empty and the grey of his vest was the first thing she saw, contrasting against the clean white of the wall where he sat. He'd closed his eyes, a sign that Lisbon immediately recognised as his own desperate attempt to steady himself.

'You okay?' she asked carefully, anticipating the moment where he fixed his smile back in place and told her to stop worrying, because he was absolutely fine. Some days she almost believed him, but today his eyes flickered open and she glimpsed, rather than the façade, an exhaustion of it. Slowly, he shook his head and Lisbon kept her silence, waiting for him to begin.

'I can't do it,' he almost whispered, and confusion found her. Whatever truth she'd been expecting, that definitely wasn't it.

'What?'

'I can't do…_this_,' he said again, his voice gaining strength as he looked up at her. 'This law and order crap, it doesn't mean anything.' Lisbon stared back, unable to find a name for the look on his face, opening her mouth, closing it, blinking. Whatever she did, she still couldn't quite make herself understand.

'No.' It was the only word she had. 'No, do you even realise what you're saying? Have you forgotten who he is?'

It was his turn for incredulity. 'What kind of question is…'

'He _murdered _your family, Jane.' She stepped forward so that they were mere feet apart. 'With your testimony, he gets death. Without it he only gets life in prison. Is that what you want?'

She'd assumed it was a simple question. However, it wasn't his lack of an answer that shocked her, but the ice in his eyes that accompanied the silence. Standing abruptly, Jane brushed past her and for a moment she just watched him walk away, dumbfounded. She could have been more gentle, yes, but they'd argued over much darker things before and neither had abandoned their case. What had she said?

She followed him. 'Jane…'

'_Is that what you want…'_ he mimicked under his breath, before spinning around to face her. 'Of course it's not,' he almost snarled. 'It's _never _been about what I want. If that were the case, he'd be dead already.'

'And you'd have blood on your hands.'

'I already do.' Lisbon's stomach lurched at that. She'd hoped that the past week had set him free from that particular shade of guilt, but it seemed scars didn't heal as quickly as she'd presumed.

'You know none of us would ever have let you kill him,' she said quietly.

'Exactly,' Jane said, and launched into the words that had so clearly spent hours and hours building up from inside. 'You've denied me what I want the most. Ergo, you've given him exactly what _he_ wants. And you're expecting me to just stand there and talk to some _lawyer_ about the past?' His dark laugh echoed around the walls. 'Don't you see?' he asked, holding her gaze. 'He's _won._ He's won,' he repeated quietly to himself, 'and I'm too much of a coward to-'

Jane stopped talking then, and for a moment Lisbon vaguely wondered why but then realised that she'd kissed him. He didn't move his lips, but neither did she; it wasn't that sort of kiss, more of a comfort than anything, and after a few seconds she broke away. She didn't pull back her head at all, didn't retreat; holding his face gently in her hands, she smelt the salt in his tears and made sure she had his full attention before speaking.

'You are a lot of things, Jane,' she began, 'but you are _not _a coward, okay? I've seen armed men go into very dark places and come out to crowds, and medals, and the effing _president_ shaking their hand…but you're _braver_ than them.' Lisbon struggled to keep the emotion out of her voice. 'You are _braver_ because you _live _in that dark place, every day, and no-one sees or hears-'

'You do,' he cut her off suddenly, and it unbalanced her just enough to pull her back to her point. She pressed their foreheads lightly together.

'All Red John's ever wanted is for you to suffer,' she murmured, 'and so far you have. But in six months he'll be _dead_, and you'll be alive.' She watched the words sink in, felt his eyes close with a soft acceptance.

'He's won nothing,' she breathed against his lips, waiting a moment before repeating his words. 'Don't you see?'

Lisbon's words fell away to a silence in which she held her breath and waited, suddenly aware of how close she was to him. When he nodded, her forehead moved with his and she couldn't help but smile as relief crept over her. Jane kissed her again, slightly longer this time, and then at last they fully broke apart. Without a word they ascended the hallway back toward the courtroom, he wiping away the last of the tears and she pretending not to notice. It occurred to her that maybe they would never talk of this moment; maybe it would just be filed away in both of their minds as something that may have happened, but probably didn't. Maybe it hadn't really helped that much at all.

But then she glanced over her shoulder and saw all of the pain and the guilt that he'd left behind, choking the air and staining the walls.

And she knew that it had.

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><p><strong>Thanks for reading! I would love it if you could review as well. I've got a quote in mind for Chap 5, but you can never have too much inspiration...hint hint :D<strong>

**TAJ **


	5. Forgetting

**Chapter 5 is here...thank you to everyone who reviewed the last chapter! Also, thank you to mentalagent13 who provided the following quote. I'm not sure about this chapter, though. I can't put my finger on it, I just don't like it as much. So I'd love a review more than usual, because I really want to know if I'm just imagining things or if it really is not very good. **

**Don't own the Mentalist. With luck, tomorrow I will.**

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><p><strong>Chapter Five<strong>

_Waiting is painful. Forgetting is painful. But not knowing which to do is the worse kind of suffering. _-Paulo Coelho

Jane was aware it was a dream, obviously; he'd had it many times and the clues were luminous. While wandering through the store, he'd caught his reflection in a mirror and his face was softer, less twisted by time. He not only saw the difference, but felt it, felt lighter, as if some great weight had been lifted from his shoulders and he supposed that it was true. In this dream, Red John existed only as a premonition; a future that couldn't lay a finger on him. Not yet.

And the most immediate clue was Angela, who currently twirled before him in a pink sundress.

'What do you think?' she asked him, smoothing the material over her bulging stomach. Jane caught her eye through the mirror and sighed wearily. He loved her, he did, but he _hated_ shopping.

'Honestly, Ange,' he told her, 'you could turn up in a troll costume and still be the most beautiful woman there.'

She tilted her head knowingly. 'Yes, but you _have_ to say that.'

'It's not a cocktail party,' he reminded her. 'It's a baby shower.'

Humming in agreeance, she turned side-on to analyse herself, oblivious to his lack of a compliment. It never mattered what answer he gave, because the dream would, without fail, go thus: she would buy the dress, and they would drive home. Nothing more, nothing less. Jane assumed that he'd subconsciously chosen this dream because it had no links to the pain of the coming years. It was a snapshot of another person's life, sweet and simple; a world that he used to belong to, before he banished himself.

'I don't think I'll get it,' Ange announced, pulling Jane from his musings, and he felt his eyes widen in surprise. She always bought the dress. But there was disgust in her face as she took in her reflection, and he opened his mouth confused.

'Why not?'

She turned to face him. 'It's too…pink. Almost sickly. Makes me want to puke.' Jane cocked his head, wondering where the real Ange, engaged in a steady affair with femininity, had disappeared to.

'Are you feeling okay?' he queried.

'Super,' she grinned, like there was a hidden joke that he wasn't getting.

As they stepped out of the store and into the street, headed for the car, Jane's stomach refused to settle and a question crept into his mind. It was the reason he kept glancing at her every few moments, the reason the confusion had evolved into a slow fear. Was he beginning to forget her? Perhaps the image of Ange walking beside him was losing its tone at the edges, like an old movie, but recovering a split second before he could see. Before he could begin to panic. Jane inhaled deeply and reassured himself with the thought that the next few moments of the dream were vivid, and decided to set it in action; looking across, he fixed Ange with an intense stare and waited for her to notice. Usually, he marvelled at the sunlight on her cheekbones, or the pregnancy glow of her skin; this time he focused on her edges, refusing to let her fade.

'What are you staring at?' she asked eventually.

He played his role, word for word. 'Am I not allowed to look at my own wife?'

'Of course you are,' she smiled. 'But you're not looking, Patrick, you're reading-and don't even try to deny it.' He wasn't going to. But there was the strange sense that if he walked away from Ange, she would keep talking and the dream would continue on without him; his mind was sticking to the routine, and he had no control. 'It's so strange,' she continued, and Jane knew the words before she said them. 'I mean, I look around and I see buildings and cars and people. But you look around, and you see so much more than that. It's like you're ten thousand steps ahead of everyone else.'

'You want me to stop?' he asked as they reached the car, turning to face her. She shook her head, the deep brown of her eyes twinkling in affection.

'No,' she told him. 'I just don't want you to leave me behind.'

She smiled and kissed him lightly, her protruding stomach pressing softly into him. In the instant before their lips met, Jane noticed that she had to balance on the tips of her toes to reach him; in reality and in every other dream, Ange had been tall enough to simply lean forward. He wondered bleakly if he was just edging into paranoia; dreams could not be relied on, after all, to present perfect detail. But deep down under the surface the confusion had returned and was quietly growing-something about this dream was off. Something about Ange was wrong, and he couldn't quite put his finger on it.

The traffic was light as he pulled the car out onto the road. A silence descended, which relieved him because it was familiar, part of the routine. It was how the dream always went; strangely enough, he loved these moments just as much as all the other keepsakes he had of Ange. Defined as a silence, yes, but it was neither awkward nor expectant; it merely existed. Not as a symbol of words that weren't spoken, but words that didn't need to be said. He cherished it.

It was a short-lived quiet, however, because the road their silence would continue down was closed off by cones and yellow tape. Beyond this two cars were almost fused into each other, such had been the force of their collision; wrecked metal and scorched tyres and an ambulance that had turned up far too late. Three or four policeman were attempting to restrain the small yet animated crowd of onlookers. Jane's confusion mounted. Compared to its counterparts, this was one hell of a strange dream.

'Oh, that's horrible,' Ange said.

'Sure is,' he heard himself reply, braking to turn onto a side-street. 'Teenagers. They don't learn until they're dead.'

'ME's going to have a boring evening,' she commented. 'Four hours of autopsies, and all he's going to discover is that cause of death was sudden impact. _What_ a waste of time.'

Jane let himself stare. He knew there was no use in keeping his eyes on the road. He knew the car would drive itself, with the safety and softness only a dream could provide. What he didn't know was who sat in the passenger seat beside him. She looked like Ange, but her words most certainly did not belong to her; she'd been far too wrapped up in the affairs of the living to know anything about death. In fact, Jane could almost swear he was now having a conversation with Lisbon. And that just threw everything out of proportion.

'Are you sure you're feeling alright?' he asked eventually. She turned and met his gaze with a raised eyebrow.

'Of coure, Jane. I'm absolutely fine; in fact, I feel amazing.' Ange ran a hand over her stomach. 'Charlie's been a little restless lately, though; no time for rest, just kick, kick, kick.' She laughed. 'I think she's going to be a soccer player.'

'She probably knows it's nearly time to…' his words trailed off as he backtracked and re-read her words. The confusion became utter bewilderment.

'What?' she asked. He swallowed.

'You called me Jane.' The familiar warmth in Ange's eyes suddenly melted, as did her smile, and for a few moments it was as if she didn't see him. Without a word, she turned her back on him and began to stare out the car window at the houses gliding past. As if hoping that a silence would act as clarification, would make him forget.

'Ange…' he began, but then his eyes flickered down to her neck and he was hit by the necklace, falling gently from her neck to a dainty gold cross. And his words shattered.

Slowly, she turned to him and he gasped. Her eyes were green. Not just any shade of green, which he could cope with, but a piercing emerald he knew so very well from the world that succeeded hers. Suddenly, the confusion wrote itself into some sort of sense, or so he vaguely supposed it to be, because it certainly made no sense to him. Nothing did.

'If it was me and her dying in that crash,' she said, 'but you could only save one of us, who would you choose?'

'_What_?'

'Patrick, please. Answer the question.'

'You, of course,' he complied, refusing to acknowledge who the 'her' was. It didn't matter, anyway. It was Ange over anybody. But she looked no more reassured at this, her smile bitterly sad, and he felt his heart beginning to tear.

'But that would be pointless,' she told him. 'I'm already dead.'

Before he was even able to string together a sentence, able to think, Jane felt himself being pulled back, out of the car, up and away from Ange…he fought it, but he had little strength and was occupied with his heart which threatened to burst through his skin, refusing to leave the person who made it whole. Yet at the same time, it pulled him upward, desperately searching for the surface. He could do nothing but let himself be taken, closing his eyes…and a moment later, the darkness stopped spinning and he began to think again.

As his eyes flickered opened, Lisbon leant back on the edge of his desk and tilted her head.

'We got an ID on the victim,' she informed him. 'Valerie Stevens, 31 years old. She's a freelance journalist.'

'Told you she was a writer,' he mumbled and she rolled her eyes. The green of them blinded him and for a moment all the confusion of his dream, coupled with the confusion of reality, pushed a question into the air. 'Lisbon.'

'Yeah.'

'If you were one of two people in a car crash, and I could only save one life, would you want me to save yours?'

Her lips parted in surprise, but she gave the matter a few seconds thought.

'That depends,' she eventually said.

'On what?'

'On who you leave behind.'

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><p><strong>There we go. Please R&amp;R! I have a couple of quotesoneshot concepts, but I'd love some more.**

**TAJ :)**


	6. Truth

**Okay, so the second half of the finale aired last night in Aus, and I was so psyched up by it that I had a writing spree and got this done three days earlier than expected. I'm quite happy with that. Thank you to everyone who reviewed the last chapter, and to In The Name who again provided a wonderful quote. On a side note, I drank tea while writing this :)**

**If I owned the Mentalist, I wouldn't need to wait two damn months later than America to watch the finale :)**

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><p><strong>Chapter Six<strong>

_"Truth is by nature self-evident. As soon as you remove the cobwebs of ignorance that surround it, it shines clear." _- Mohandas Gandhi

His eyes plastered to the Red John file, Jane sat on the couch in his loft and waited for the fire to start. For the shadows and stains of the past to leap before him, fading all reason and logic until the anger was all he could feel. Raging to a point where no amount of forgiveness, no sentence or question or admittance could ever be quite enough. The flames, once started, could not be put out by water. Blood, perhaps.

But the feeling never came. He hadn't felt it in weeks; it was still a fire, of course, but not quite so hot, not burning his insides quite so painfully. Jane wasn't sure whether he missed it or not, whether it was because he'd healed slightly or because he'd given up the chase. Deep down he supposed that he shouldn't miss the pain, should be grateful for the sudden ability to sleep for hours on end. But all it did was confuse him, more and more with each time it crossed his mind.

It occurred to him that maybe he'd exhausted the file's contents, gathered all he could from what it told him. Jane stood slowly, walked over to where the folder sat on the table and flipped it open to the first piece of paper, the murder of Hannah Fenton, 28 years old. Immediately, a thousand stories began to write themselves, some he'd been through many times but others he was yet to read. Jane could recite the page's words in his sleep, and yet his mind was still coming up with new answers, new possibilities. He hadn't exhausted anything, that was for sure.

With the dead end came a sudden claustrophobia; there was no thoughts but his own in the room and they surrounded him, thinned the air. He needed a distraction, needed human contact so he could breathe again. Crossing the room quickly, Jane descended the stairs and as he touched the bottom step two agents strode past, deep in conversation. It calmed him at once, melted away his thoughts, made him feel human again. He spent so much time upstairs that he often forgot.

He found Lisbon in the kitchen, making her fifth cup of coffee that day. It was an exhausting case, the one they were currently working, and it frustrated Jane as well but ultimately it was Lisbon's head in the guillotine if the killer escaped. When the victim was Aaron Fletcher, grandson of the mayor, they couldn't afford any mistakes. The pressure on her was obvious; there were deepset bags under her eyes, and her hands shook slightly as she set the kettle on its holder.

'Slow down,' he told her.

'I don't need to slow down,' she muttered without looking at him.

'Yes, you do.' Lisbon ignored him and began to search the overhead cupboard. Jane waited for her to find her mug and then, as soon as she set it down on the bench, he reached out and stole it. She didn't react verbally, as he thought she might; instead, she simply fixed him with a death glare. He would have liked to play keepers off, but it felt inappropriate and she looked about to kick him somewhere unpleasant.

'I'll make you some tea,' he said. Tea would keep her calm, help her think; coffee would just accelerate everything into one big mass of incompetence.

'I don't like tea,' she claimed angrily.

'You've never tried it. Sit down.' And when he saw that she was about to object, he added, 'please.'

Lisbon pouted but did as he asked, sitting down at the small round table with a hint of the glare still present in her eyes. Jane made the tea as quickly as he could, and when he turned around she was staring into the middle of the table, her mind elsewhere. He knew the look, would have seen it many times on himself if possible. She was churning back over the facts, the known, searching for that one detail that would launch them on the path of a promising lead.

He set the mug gently down in front of her and sat in the chair opposite. Lisbon glanced at him almost suspiciously before reaching for the mug; as she brought it to her lips, Jane watched her face carefully. Keen for that millisecond of bliss before she remembered who she was with and painted on a false dislike. But that millisecond either didn't happen or he wasn't quick enough to catch it, because all he saw was her grimace as she lowered the mug back down to the table.

'It tastes like dirt,' she announced.

'Now, come on,' he reasoned, 'it can't be that bad.'

'No, I mean it _actually _tastes like dirt. What the hell did you put in it?'

'Don't blame the tea,' he defended, her harsh words immediately putting him on the back foot. 'It's not my fault.'

'It never is.' Lisbon said it just loud enough for him to hear. Though there was most likely a fair bit of truth in her words, Jane knew exactly where the anger stemmed from and decided to address that first.

'It's just a case,' he told her gently.

'But that's the problem. It isn't _just_ a case, it's bigger than that.' She met his gaze with an observation. 'And you don't have a clue either, do you.' He raised his eyebrows in genuine surprise, and she went on. 'There isn't that excited gleam in your eyes, like the fun's about to start. Also, you haven't disappeared yet.'

'Disappeared?'

'Off to prove a hunch, or to set one of your idiotic plans into action.'

'Idiotic? Ouch.' Jane aimed for a smile and he was granted it, however small. After a second or two he returned to his main point. 'We have the truth already,' he told her. 'It's there in the case file, it's just not clear enough to read yet. All we need is clarity. Where's Cho?'

'With Rigsby, talking to the parents.'

'Van Pelt?'

'Digging into Newman's financials.'

'There we go.' He leant back in his chair. 'Clarity. All we have to do is wait for it.' That wasn't exactly how it worked and they were both aware, but her smile was larger in the silence and he knew she appreciated him trying.

'Take it,' she said softly, sliding the mug toward him. 'Have your cup of dirt. I'm making coffee.'

As she stood, Jane blinked and suddenly a blinding truth overcame him. It had been there all along, he sensed, lingering just out of sight, and why it occurred to him now was an utter mystery. Ignorance, probably. Fading to clarity, able to be read. Because the truth was that the Red John file had not lost its dark appeal. He hadn't healed, hadn't moved on, certainly hadn't given up the chase. It was Lisbon; she was pulling him away, lightening the dark, a weight of guilt on his back that made it harder and harder to run.

So he slowed down. And eventually, he stopped.

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><p><strong>There we go. I have a quote for Chap 7, but after that I'd be extremely grateful for some more quotes. There'll be 10 chapters, so three more, pretty please?<strong>

**I'd also love a review, even if you hated it. **

**TAJ :)**


	7. Illusions

**Hello! So here's Chapter Seven. This one's set post S3 finale, and you should probably assume that Jane actually did shoot Red John, and that now he's in prison for it. Thanks very much to everyone who reviewed the last chapter, also to Wldwmn who provided this quote. It's very angsty, for me anyway. I'll be sure to make next chapter a happy one, I haven't done that for a while. Anyway, it was a wonderful quote. Must be off to school now. Please R&R!**

**Nope. Don't own it.**

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><p><strong>Chapter Seven<strong>

'_One sometimes weeps over one's illusions with as much bitterness as over a death.'_- Guy de Maupassant.

Lisbon switched off the engine and sat for just a moment in the silence. Glancing to her right, she saw the empty passenger seat and remembered a time where she'd dreamt for this day, for an entire drive spent without wanting to bash her head against the steering wheel. It had been quite a nice dream, from a distance at least. But now that it was here, now that he no longer sat in the silence beside her, all it felt was wrong. Like she'd forgotten something.

A sudden knock on the window startled her. Through the evening fog on the glass, she saw red hair and Van Pelt stepped back as she pushed open the door.

'You alright, Boss?'

'Yeah, fine.' She was sick of the question and bored with the answer, having claimed it far too many times these past few months. Of course, it didn't help that she knew it wasn't true. None of them were alright. They went about their cases and convictions and pretended that they'd healed-some more convincingly than others-but just under the surface were the same old scars and time would not fade them away.

With a showing of her badge to the local police they were inside the house. A creaky door, a dark hallway. If he were here he'd comment on the drama of it all…but he wasn't, she reminded herself harshly. As they entered the living room, she pulled on the gloves she'd been given and her gaze fell immediately on the body sprawled on the couch, his face bloody from a nasty head wound. On the floor beside him was a leather wallet, and she bent to pick it up.

'Name's Eric Shroeder, 46 years old,' Rigsby informed her. 'His sister found him about a half hour ago, but the M.E. thinks he's been dead at least twelve hours, which puts time of death at 7am at the latest. Cause of death looks like blunt force trauma to the head.' Lisbon glanced around the room and saw only cleanliness, no clues to suggest a profession or a craft.

'What does he do?' she queried absentmindedly.

'Not much anymore,' she heard, a soft voice and then a laugh. Her heart stopped.

'What?' she asked, spinning to face Rigsby in the bleak hope that they were his words. But he and Van Pelt only gave her the same strange look, and she swallowed. She must be tired, hearing things. She really should work less.

'He's an insurance agent,' Van Pelt said cautiously. 'His clients include some of the biggest names in California. Leo and Sons, Geoffrey Harlan, Brighton Inc.'

'So, wealthy then.'

'Well, you'd think that, but according to his sister he's deep in debt.' Rigsby opened a little black notebook and read from his notes. 'He's a gambler. Seems he put his money on anything; football, horses, baseball…'

'And golf.' The familiar voice again made her breath catch painfully in her throat, and this time it continued as if prompted by scepticism. 'There's a glove tan on his left hand, and the slope of his handwriting indicates he's right-handed; hence, he's a golfer.' Lisbon glanced down at Shroeder's wallet, noticed the handwriting sloping to the right and concluded that for anyone to know that, they would almost need to be standing right behind her…suddenly there was a light brush against the back of her neck, and she jumped.

'Are you sure you're alright, Boss?' That damn question again. Lisbon ignored it.

'Where's Cho?' she asked loudly. She needed to get out of the room, away from this twisted game her mind was playing with her. It was making her nervous.

'With the sister, in the next room.' She left quickly, but not quick enough to miss the sudden concern burning into her back.

The kitchen greeted her with a nod from Cho and a glance from a tear-wrecked brunette. The sister, assumedly. Lisbon pushed all thought of familiar voices into a corner and as she strode over attempted to look calm, unfazed.

'I'm sorry, Mrs Boyd,' Cho was saying, 'but I'm going to have to ask you where you were around seven this morning.'

'Yes, of course,' the woman breathed. Her name was Tara, Lisbon discovered from a peek at Cho's notes. 'I was…at home, asleep. My shift doesn't start until nine-thirty.'

'Ma'am,' she said gently, 'do you know anyone who might want to harm your brother?'

'No, everyone loved Eric.'

'Any colleagues or clients that might hold a grudge?'

'No.'

'Liar,' she heard, soft yet self-assured, and as Cho continued the interview she closed her eyes. But no matter how hard she tried to block the voice out, she could still hear him, as clearly as if he were standing there beside them. 'Eric wasn't loved by everyone. You, Tara, for instance…you hated him. He had all the success in the world, all the money, and each day you would watch him throw it away. Everything you ever wanted, _wasted_ on him.'

During the split second that she opened her eyes, Lisbon thought she saw a flash of blonde hair, grey vest, but it vanished before she could focus. Unsettled to the point of panic, she tried to concentrate on Cho's words but heard them as if from underwater. And over the top, that velvety voice again rushed mercilessly to surround her, continuing that routine of accusation she'd seen far too many times.

'You weren't asleep this morning, Tara.' The woman in question had her misty eyes on Cho, oblivious to the fact that she was about to be verbally charged with murder. 'You came here, to try and talk some sense into Eric before he left for work.' A dramatic pause. 'But he wouldn't listen, would he?'

Up until now, Lisbon had only been angry at herself for fabricating his presence, conjuring his words from other cases in her memories. But suddenly and viciously, her anger began to be directed toward _him_. After all, he was haunting her like a bloody ghost. He was only in prison. He didn't have the _right. _The fury built steadily inside her until it threatened to burst, waves of dizzying red in her throat, and she suddenly couldn't be damned holding it back anymore.

'You're not fucking dead, Jane!' she shrieked, and in the aftermoments of similar madness she waited for his reaction. Eventually, it dawned on her that there was only silence. Silence, and expressions of shock from Cho and Tara, and also from Van Pelt and Rigsby who had just rushed into the room. Most of her knew that she needed to take a deep breath, calm down, but the air wouldn't come and the fury wouldn't leave. She couldn't possibly do her job like this.

'Sorry, excuse me,' she mumbled and fled through the nearest door into what looked like the dining room. Suddenly, without warning or reason, she burst into her first tears since his arrest and once started she couldn't stop. Sinking to the floor with her back against the wall, she closed her eyes and began rocking herself back and forth as if it might keep the remaining fragments of her sanity from leaving. _He's not here_, she repeatedly told herself. _He's not here, he's in prison, he's in prison. _But slowly, the truth dawned.

He would always be there. If not in body, then in memory, and it was a recollection that hurt more to let go than to keep. A long time ago she had hoped than one day, after he'd destroyed or been destroyed, she could maybe cut a clean line between past and future and let life resume. Not this torn and damaging half-existence that infuriated her. She was free of the physical him, yes, but she wasn't free; no matter how far she ran, how much she lived, if she looked back she would always see his cocky grin and the illusions that would never let her escape.

When she opened her eyes, he was there in front of her. Not a glimpse of colour through her tears, but all of him.

'Haven't you read the instructions?' he asked softly, jokingly. 'You've got to let go for it to stop hurting.'

But that only made her cry harder.

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><p><strong>There we go. I have a quote for Chapter 8, but after that I would gladly beg for some more. Please review!<strong>

**TAJ :)**


	8. Waiting

**Okay, firstly (honestly, this is more important than the UPDATE!) there's a beautiful Australian show called Spirited, starring Claudia Karvan and Matt King, that Foxtel has axed after only two seasons despite that it was the most-watched Australian show on Pay TV. Please help Australians save the show by signing the petition at ... Go there now, then come back and read my chapter. It can't wait :)**

**Right, back to business. I haven't updated in a while (shouldn't be updating at all, Year 12 exams in two weeks-EEEK!) but I really needed to write SOMETHING to distract myself from the Spirited situation. I'm aware it's slightly OOC, but hey, it could happen. Thanks so much to Aimlessly Unknown for the quote, this only took me three hours to write which shows how excited I was about it. **

**I'd much rather own Spirited than Mentalist right now, but nope to both.**

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><p><strong>Chapter Eight<strong>

_You'd think the woman waits on the man, having always been told as such, and yet-more often than not-the man is left waiting for the woman who is waiting for him._ –Alexandra Patrickson

It was a few months before Jane could open his eyes and see change.

Not in him, oddly enough, at least not at first. On reflection, he often wondered if maybe it was because he'd been numb, drifting through time in sheer disbelief that he'd come out of his past with life at all. In moments of madness, he found it less painful to simply believe that Red John was still alive. That his tirade wasn't over, that the rage hadn't just shed him like skin the moment he'd won…

No, he could hardly be expected to feel _changed_ when he barely remembered how to feel at all. But his observational skills had not been damaged, and rather surprisingly he'd begun to see change in the people around him. It was subtle, to begin with; Cho's raised eyebrows, Rigsby's doubletake, Grace's smile when she thought he wasn't looking. But as the weeks passed, their relief became more and more obvious and it suddenly occurred to Jane that they'd been tiptoeing around him for ten years, and he'd never once noticed.

The biggest change was in Lisbon. In the beginning, she'd looked at him like he was a complete stranger and he found himself utterly unprepared for how much it hurt. He'd expected her to be angry, bleakly hoped she would empathise but never once thought that she might categorise him as she had. Like he wasn't nor had he ever been her Consultant, just one of the many murderers she'd fit into her life.

Day by day, however, he found that he couldn't mistake the lightness that began to radiate from her, shining so brilliantly in her eyes whenever she looked at him. Jane saw her smile more often, felt the warmness in her words and it dawned on him that the Lisbon he'd known before was not the Lisbon that so captivated him now. No, this was Teresa, or as much Teresa as she'd been able to rescue from her childhood. Calmer, less kentankerous; granted, he _had_ eased up on the cunning plans and the mind tricks. He didn't know whether it was because he was tired of pretending, or because he no longer needed the drama of it all as a fierce distraction.

He'd told her once, how nice it was that she didn't want to punch him in the face quite so often. She'd laughed, the sound sending a rush down his spine, and then she'd told him, 'I'm not the only one who's changed, Jane.' At the time, he'd assumed she was referring to the rest of the unit but her words had prompted a curious glance in the mirror. He wouldn't ever forget the shock, of barely recognising the man who looked back from the glass, with the same lightness that shone in her. The same old guilt in his eyes, but faded to a faint twinge he decided he would take in exchange for the fact that his walls were down, for the first time in a decade.

They'd become undeniably closer, he and her. Her and he. Somewhere along the way, they'd shifted from two opposing forces to…well, he wasn't sure of the definition, but he was adament that it was better than before.

Everything was better than before, and this was what shocked him the most.

She'd had a terrible day. Murder was often quite the simple thing to solve but the current case had proved to be all dead ends and frustration, and so he decided he would take her out for dinner. 'I know this great Italian restaurant,' he told her, 'you'll love it,' and four months ago Lisbon might have protested but today she just smiled wearily and followed him to the elevator. He'd taken her out many times before and had quickly discovered how fond she was of foreign food; many times she had thanked him for the night, and he'd brushed off the gratitude. What he would never tell her was that it was as much a therapy for him, to watch her eat her food with a tenderness and an intimacy he couldn't hold back, nor could he ever have expressed at work.

If he could think himself intact enough to be worthy of love, he might claim he was falling.

They swept through dinner with an easiness he revelled in, and when the manager began shooting them impatient looks Jane sighed in annoyance, and asked for the bill. He'd noticed the grey clouds looming overhead beforehand, and so it wasn't the heavy rain that surprised him, but Lisbon's reaction to it. Unmoving, she tilted her head toward the sky and closed her eyes, letting the water fall over her like a cool blanket. Jane found himself unable to pull his gaze away, drawn to the wonder of her like a magnet; eventually, he had the presence of mind to tug at her hand and she came back to him with a grin.

It took them several minutes to reach his car, by which time they were both saturated. The Citroen, being a vintage model, lacked a powerful heater and within moments Lisbon was shivering.

'Sorry,' he muttered.

'For what?'

He gestured to the heater, and she shook her head, smiling. 'Don't ever apologise for your car,' she said.

'It's a dinosaur.'

'It's vintage,' she corrected him. 'And it says everything anyone ever needs to know about you.' Jane glanced over and caught her gaze then, a gentleness in her face that again held him transfixed, this time for so long that, unbeknownst to him, he'd begun to drift the car right. It was the blaring horn of a truck that snapped his gaze back onto the road, and suddenly he was glad of the dark because he could feel a blush in his cheeks, hastened all the more when Lisbon started laughing.

'Oh, I finished that book you gave me,' she announced a few minutes later, as he turned the car into the parking lot beside her building. Jane vaguely remembered; he'd decided for some reason that she needed to 'appreciate literature more', and subsequently shoved Austen's _Northanger __Abbey_ in her face.

'How was it?' he asked.

'Crap,' she grimaced. He feigned shock, and she smiled.

'I didn't understand it. I like my books in English, thanks.'

'You are so anti-culture that it hurts,' he told her.

'All I know is that I can't stand it staring at me all the time. Please take it out of my apartment, get it away.'

They continued bickering about literature all the way to her door, but it was playful banter and Jane had come to cherish the way her comments were so naturally complimentary to his. Still shivering, it took her many tries to fit the key in the door and a few moments later _Northanger __Abbey_ was in Jane's hands. Lisbon stood merely a foot away, a puddle of water slowly forming at her feet.

'Thanks,' she said softly, and he smiled.

'Anytime.' It was at this point that he would usually mumble a goodbye and head for the door. But the sight of her, dripping rain and beautiful, was a temptation he didn't have the strength or will to resist. Painfully slowly, he raised his hand and let his fingers brush down one side of her face; her eyes gently fluttered closed and the desire to kiss her became so powerful in that moment that he very nearly gave in.

But Jane wasn't blind. He saw the desire in her face too, burning over the surface, which for most men would have been more than enough. But underneath this desire, he saw all too clearly the walls she had built so precariously, formed from twenty-five years of protecting herself. And he knew these boundaries would not be brought down overnight, having attempted the very same thing in himself. It had taken months to relearn how to trust, how to let people in without giving in to the pressing urge to run. Lisbon might be lighter, softer, willing to be his, but he knew it wasn't enough. Not yet.

And so Jane let his hand drop. She opened her eyes with a faint confusion, which became understanding as she read his expression. Somehow, in the race from aloof and untouchable to human and wanting, he'd overtaken her. And he'd wait for her to catch up, whether it took weeks or months or the rest of his life; one day, he was sure, he'd be strong enough to break down her walls and there'd be nothing in between them.

'Night,' he murmured, smiling wistfully. Lisbon returned the expression.

'Night.'

Jane left her apartment incomplete, not due to emptiness but because he left a little of himself with her, a deposit of sorts, a promise that gave him hope.

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><p><strong>Thanks for reading, I'm good for quotes (only two chapters to go) but I'm always up for more. <strong>

**TAJ :)**


	9. Love

**Hello! So as I've officially PASSED high school (yay!) I find myself with much time on my hands, and as a result I had a ten-hour writing marathon and wrote this. Thanks ever-so-much to In The Name for the quote, and I'm very sorry it's not half as fluffy as I'm sure the quote suggests. I've decided I'm not very good with straight-out fluff, or any kind of fluff at all, actually. Also, thanks bunches to everyone who reviewed Chapter 8; I would have got around to sending you personal replies, but I've been extremely busy.**

**Disclaimer: If I owned the Mentalist, J+L would have been madly in love by now.**

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><p><strong>Chapter Nine<strong>

'_You __love __simply __because __you __cannot __help __it.__' _- Kim Anderson

The moment the engine died, Lisbon had wrenched the car door open and was running. No time for caution, a thought which she used to justify her lack of a gun; this wasn't, after all, a cold, faceless maniac whose limits she was yet to see him reach.

It was only Jane.

_Only __Jane_. The knowledge was supposed to calm her, but the longer she knew it the less difference she saw between him and all the psychopaths she'd ever faced. And so Lisbon found it less painful to let her mind go blank, let the folds of the night carry her along and Bosco's voice rush to surround her from just outside the old barn where he stood.

'Thank God you're here, Teresa.' Bosco loaded his Glock as he spoke, shaking slightly with anticipation. 'We've got Agents moving to positions at every entrance, the negotiator's on his way just in case.'

'Any action from inside?' she heard herself ask.

'Not a sound, but Jane's definitely still in there. So's Italiaferro.' At the name, a chill ran down the length of Lisbon's spine and the memory of their most recent Red John case came rushing back. Jane had been so certain, so confident that Rosalin Harker's mystery lover was the man who'd destroyed his life. The rest of the world had been less sure; Bosco wouldn't hear him at all, and Lisbon wished so fervently that the world was wrong but lately, with all the evidence suggesting the contrary, she wasn't so sure. She had the horrible feeling that Sam was right.

That when they rushed inside, all they would find was a helpless Italiaferro and a Jane who only needed saving from himself.

She was pulled from her thoughts when Van Pelt approached. 'Perimetre's secure, Boss,' the redhead informed, and Lisbon nearly replied but realised with a start that she'd been talking to Bosco. Grace had called him Boss. The reality seared through her in that moment; there were no units and rivalries anymore, just one side against the other, good against bad.

And Jane was bad. Lisbon's stomach lurched and her throat tightened with something close to nausea. In the light skimming through the gaps in the barn door, Bosco noticed her face.

'You couldn't have done anything,' he assured her gently. 'He was a lost cause from the beginning, don't blame yourself.' As he spoke, the nausea faded and a sudden anger boiled underneath Lisbon's skin. It spilled out before she could make sense of it.

'No-one's a lost cause,' she said fiercely.

'Yeah, well, Jane isn't no-one…'

'You know _nothing_ about him, Sam,' she almost snarled. Bosco only looked at her, not hurt but taken aback and she could feel the same surprise on her own face. It made little sense why she would want to defend the man they were here to arrest. Even if it was only Jane, wrapped in a few extra layers of rage…and then she realised. She wasn't protecting the Jane inside the barn, but the Jane who'd shot Hardy for her, who'd bought her a pony and looked so very sad when she told him she didn't trust him. The side of him that had lost custody over his body.

Before she could make proper sense of it, however, there came two gunshots from inside the barn. The sounds rocketed through her, clenching her heart so that she couldn't breathe… her eyes squeezed closed, she took a shaky breath and listened painfully for any sound, any sign of who had been shot. After a moment, a loud scream cut the night in half and she shuddered in relief. Jane was holding the gun.

An instant later, she heard Bosco speaking urgently into his transmitter.

'We go in on three,' he told the Agents positioned at each entrance. A sudden surge of panic replaced the relief, and Lisbon stepped forward before she could stop herself.

'Sam, don't.' In the shadow of the barn she could just make out his confusion, and she continued uncertainly. 'You go in with all those guns, and Jane like he is, and it's not going to turn out well for one or more of your Agents-or one of mine. He won't give a crap about whether he dies or not.' The thought saddened her.

'Boss?' filtered through from the transmitter, but Bosco's attention was on her.

'Fine, then,' he replied almost mockingly. 'What do _you_ think we should do?'

The solution presented itself in such clarity that she was surprised Bosco couldn't see it too. 'I'll go in.' His jaw dropped, but she kept going. 'I've got more chance of getting through to him. He listens to me.'

'_Sometimes_.'

'Which is more than he listens to you.' Bosco stared at her for a long moment, evidently unnerved by what he saw but Lisbon only stared back, impatient. Aware that every second Jane spent alone with himself was another ounce of darkness she'd have to remove.

'Sam,' she pleaded softly.

'_Boss_?' Slowly, Bosco raised the transmitter to his face. 'Stand down,' he ordered, 'remain in position.' Then, to Lisbon, 'You've got five minutes and then we're coming in. Are you armed?' She shook her head and he pushed his Glock at her, but she refused to take it. A very large part of her screamed at this, but history told her that Jane liked to protect her when she was vulnerable. Maybe, just maybe, he'd remember.

'He won't shoot me,' she claimed, and hoped that she was right.

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><p>The barn's lighting didn't quite stretch its warmth to its corners, which left Lisbon more than a little unnerved as she crept forward. She saw no sign of Jane, but as she neared the centre of the barn Italiaferro made his presence blatantly known, his wide eyes almost ogling at her, his chest dripping red from the bulletholes. For a moment Lisbon stopped to regard the body, but then the hard barrel of a gun pressed into her back and everything else stopped.<p>

'Jane,' she breathed.

'Hello Lisbon.' The voice, though his, was startlingly cold and brought with it none of the familiarity or warmth that it usually did. Her hands suddenly seemed so empty, so useless without some sort of weapon, and to distract herself from her own punishing naivety and from the gun at her back, she asked Jane, 'was it really him?'

'Yes.'

'You should have called me first, instead of just…' Lisbon cut her words short when he pushed the barrel harder into her spine, the gun trembling against her skin, her skin trembling against the gun. She took a quivering breath and considered her words more carefully this time.

'Can you…can you please lower the gun, Jane, I'm not going to do anything.'

He didn't obey or even answer her, but Lisbon felt the sweeping motion of him rotating around her like a planet in orbit. As Patrick Jane stopped directly in front of her she could have claimed that he looked no different, apart from the blood on his hands, but when she reached his eyes she had to stop herself from gasping. Their once pure blue had frozen into a hard, unforgiving ice, a hatred that sent the fear creeping up her arms to the tips of her fingers. She'd never seen him like this. Not this far gone.

'What's he done to you?' she whispered, and for the smallest instant the Jane she knew flickered on his face, brought to the surface by the sadness in her voice. He vanished as quickly as he came.

'How many Agents has Bosco got outside?' he asked, as if it were an everyday conversation they were having. Lisbon didn't know, hadn't thought to count the shadows in the dark as she'd arrived, and when she paused he stepped dangerously closer to bring the gun up to her neck. He threatened softly, 'answer me.'

Lisbon guessed with the first number to enter her head. 'About…eight, I think,' she stammered, and then, 'Jane, please…they're all here to help you. _I__'__m _here to help you.'

But Jane only laughed, the harshness making her wince. 'Is that what he told you to say?'

She tried again. 'I'm on your side…'

'_NO_!' he shouted, and she jumped violently at the sudden volume. Jane all but shoved the gun into her neck, bringing the tears to linger in her eyes, choking her. His own eyes were wild and barely inches from hers, and he spoke with a calmness that only scared her more. 'You were _never_ on my side.'

'Patrick,' she pleaded as she had done with Bosco, 'please, don't…' Lisbon heard the helplessness in her voice, felt the tears-which had escaped to run subtle lines down her cheeks-and she hated it. But there was nothing left to do, except pray that Bosco's prescribed five minutes was very nearly up, and that any second his men (and hers) would come bursting through the door to save her.

'Give me a reason,' Jane muttered. Words which sent a sharp chill through Lisbon when she realised what he meant: he wanted a reason to pull the gun away, to keep her alive.

'Because I helped you find him,' she offered weakly, but knew instantly from his unchanging expression that it wasn't enough. Jane was too stuck in the past to consider debts he owed to people in the present. Too blind to see, in his new life, anything that could possibly compare to the old, anything worth saving, anything that could drag him out into the light and keep him there…

And suddenly, she found a reason. It was a lie she would hate herself for telling later, but a lie that needing telling if there ever was to _be_ a 'later'. Lisbon only hoped that she had the courage to make Jane believe it.

'Because I love you,' she uttered.

She saw the shock immediately in his eyes, bringing back with it just a little of the light, shrugging off just a little of the darkness to the point where she no longer saw just one man. There was the Jane she feared-the raging, ugly mask that had taken him over-but underneath she could also see the Jane she knew, soft and warm, desperate to get out. Both Janes were staring at her in complete disbelief, most likely too unstable to read her properly but Lisbon decided that she looked the part nonetheless.

'_Why_?' he eventually asked, his voice dripping with disgust, and Lisbon bleakly wondered whether he was disgusted that it was _her_ that loved him, or that she could still love him after seeing him like _this_.

'Because…I can't help it.' She took a shaky breath and the words fabricated themselves. 'Because right now, and whenever you talk about _him_'-she couldn't quite bring herself to say Red John-'you're a…a monster, but I still…I can still see _you_.' Quietly, she said, 'I don't want you to fade away.' Lisbon didn't think it wise to add that it was an undeniably dead and arguably innocent man on the ground behind her, and so he would fade from her life whether he shot her or not. Jane, horribly, was condemned. His future would be spent either behind bars or waiting for the fatal currents of a chair to take him away.

She felt the skin of her neck vibrate as his hand began to shake, even more uncontrollably than before, his eyes wide and unmoving. Lisbon saw nothing beyond the tremble of his finger against the trigger and so closed her eyes to pray, waiting almost patiently for her life to end, for the sound of gunfire to send her into nothingness.

It was a sound that never came. After a moment, the pressure of the gun left her neck and when she opened her eyes Jane was slowly backing away, his gaze still on her but now one of utter horror, the gun lowered but still high enough to shoot her ankle, should he accidentally pull the trigger. He was mouthing something to himself, and it was only when she concentrated on the movement of his lips that she realised he was repeating her own word, 'monster', over and over. Jane stopped a few steps away, the same time that his murmurings fell silent, and he looked at her through the fear ablaze in his eyes.

With a deep breath, Lisbon began to edge forward, keeping their gazes locked, making no sudden movements, all-too-aware that dark, terrifying Jane could return as easily as he had disappeared. When she was near enough to touch him, she stopped, and spoke in the softest tone she had.

'I'm going to take the gun away now, okay?' Jane didn't speak, only nodded as if he'd like nothing more, and a long moment later Lisbon had gently prised his fingers away from the trigger. One flick of metal and the bullets fell into her hand; noticing the blood now on her fingers but not caring in the slightest, she tossed both the gun and the bullets aside, and they hit the ground with a series of clatters. When she next gazed up at Jane, her vision went misty with relief; he was familiar Jane again, his eyes no longer cold but the purest of blues, and bordering his own tears as he inhaled shakily.

'Lisbon…' he began, his voice barely breaking the silence, and she tried to shush him gently but he kept going. 'I'm sorry…I didn't…I never meant…'

'It's okay,' she whispered, and her words seemed to break something deep inside him. Lisbon pulled him gently to her and felt his arms wrap naturally around her frame, his skull resting against hers, his curls tickling her neck as he cried. He was heavy on her shoulder, almost to the point where she couldn't support him but Lisbon refused to deny Jane the comfort of human warmth, a feeling he had been devoid of for so very long. 'It's okay,' she repeated through the gaps of her own tears and then, when she was sick of hearing the words, 'it's over, it's over.' He showed no sign of hearing her but she didn't stop, wondering vaguely if the words were for herself just as much as they were for him.

She heard the barn door thrown open with a screech, and the rushing of shoes on the ground. A few urgent shouts, but it quietened to a startled silence as Bosco's men chose to believe their own eyes.

Jane cried for the end of a past and the fear of a future.

Lisbon cried for many things, but mostly for the fact that, if she were honest with herself, her lie had not been a lie at all.

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><p><strong>Thanks for reading! And pretty please review, it makes my day and only takes a minute or so out of yours.<strong>

**One more chapter to go..I'll make sure it's at least SLIGHTLY happy this time. **

**TAJ :)**


	10. Tears

**And so it ends (sad face). Thank you a million times over to everyone who's reviewed, and to In The Name who provided the quote (again!) for this chapter. I had a blast writing this story, bless you all. ****Also, I'm going to Cambodia for two weeks on Saturday, so I won't be starting anything new for a bit but I have many ideas..very exciting. For now, enjoy this last chapter! It was a challenge to write, but I hope you like it.**

**Disclaimer: Wait, hang on...damn. Still no.**

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><p><strong>Chapter Ten<strong>

'_Tears __are __the __safety __valve __of __the __heart __when __too __much __pressure __is __laid __on __it.__'_-Albert Smith

When the call came it sliced through the silence of the CBI, formed by a caseless morning which had held them all in similar states of boredom. Lisbon raised the phone lazily to her ear and listened, politely at first but then with interest as she picked the man's accent: a conversation later, forensic photographs had appeared in her inbox and she sent them to the printer. It was a minute or two, spent staring at the images in her hands, before she found the will to face her team.

She felt Jane's attention bind itself to her the moment she entered the bullpen. 'Guys, listen up,' she ordered and as the others turned their heads she glanced discreetly in his direction, sending a premonition through her eyes, watching as he read her and his expression hardened.

'At nine thirty this morning,' Lisbon informed them, pushing through the words, 'a woman named Beth Sanders was found murdered in her apartment. London Police confirm a smiley face painted on the wall behind her in blood.'

Cho decided to state the obvious. 'Red John's killed again.'

'Why weren't we…' and then Rigsby fully processed her words. 'Wait, Boss, did you say London?'

Van Pelt looked baffled. 'As in, London, _England_?'

'Relax, it's probably just a copycat, but I had them email me the crime scene photos just in case.' She passed around the images, waiting nervously for them to reach Jane and holding her breath when they did. His eyes flickered from detail to detail (Lisbon imagined the scene coming to life around him, able to be walked through, able to be judged) and she swallowed hard as his gaze turned cold.

A few minutes later she trudged into the kitchen for coffee and he was there waiting, pointing the handle of the steaming mug at her whilst stirring his tea. She accepted the coffee wordlessly, took a sip and waited for the liquid's shuddering warmth to leave her system before asking the question.

'Is it him?'

Jane slowly nodded and she sighed, not bothering to ask how he knew, having followed him around enough crime scenes to learn that his judgment was worth trusting.

Instead, she took a long gulp of caffeine and wished that the silence, which she'd loathed only half an hour ago, would go on forever so that he wouldn't say the words.

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><p>Jane would have liked to say that it had been a tough decision to make; the truth, however, was that it had been a natural decision, a choice that had essentially decided itself the moment he'd seen the style of slashing on Beth Sanders' body and known it was Red John. And so this absolute certainty was the reason that he glanced sideways at Lisbon, her gaze fading into the floor, and felt confident that she would understand. That she would know why.<p>

'I have to go to England,' he muttered and winced as she closed her eyes against the announcement, not in shock but in sad confirmation, her fingers turning white from their deathly grip on the mug, her breath quivering. 'Lisbon,' he continued reluctantly, 'I'm sorry, but I have to do this. It's a test. Red John wants to see how far I'm willing to go to catch him.'

'Not every murder he commits is aimed at you,' she said suddenly and her claim startled him.

'This one is,' he defended.

'Prove it.' Lisbon followed her challenge with a long, unnerving stare, and Jane wished he could silence her doubts but found that the kind of evidence he had was neither physical nor observational. It seemed highly unlikely that she would accept his honest reasoning, that there was a strange, dark anticipation deep in his stomach and it wouldn't let him go.

In the midst of his pause, Van Pelt drifted innocently into the kitchen and hesitated when she noticed them. Lisbon, an argument vanishing from her lips, abruptly set her half-empty mug down on the bench and strode from the room, but not before he'd glimpsed the sudden fury in her eyes. Grace froze as she swept past, and now shot Jane a look of confusion. 'What did I do?' she asked, but by the time her question hit the air she was already behind him, and he was tailing Lisbon's shadow as she headed for her office. She promptly shut the door in his face and Jane was irked by her immaturity; when next he saw her, she was pacing away from him, and the moment the doorknob clicked behind him she spun around.

'So you're leaving, then,' she stated flatly, her coldness confounding him. 'Just like that, you're going to _England_. You're taking his bait.'

'Lisbon, I….'

'Do you have any idea how _selfish_ you're being?' Her voice had become louder than the office walls could possibly suppress, and Jane felt himself being taken with it.

'What are you talking about?' he asked, frustrated, and she glared.

'There are people here who _need_ you,' she told him fiercely, 'and you spend every day oblivious to this because all you can see is Red John. He doesn't deserve a damn _second_ of your time…'

'He _killed_ my…'

'I _know_ what he did,' she cut him off. 'For God's sake, Jane, I know what the bastard did. But you've been chasing him for over a decade, and he's still faceless to you. He's effing _invisible_. Honestly, how hard can it be to see past an invisible man, just this once?'

There was a stunning fragility in her eyes, and for a moment Jane was unwillingly stolen away into one of his more recent memories, a night which both he and her had resolved never to speak of again. It was still vivid, the sight of Red John's latest (at the time) victim, of thirteen-year-old Amy Johnson's bloodied yellow ringlets plastered to her face, and the intense grief that followed almost as if it were his Charlie lying there on the ground. Home that night was a horrible place, and in turn Lisbon's apartment door had been a warm and comforting thing to knock upon early in the morning. Jane also remembered through tender eyes the moonlight sifting on her cheeks as she slept, the softness of her fingers through his hair as she kissed him. And so now, as he stared at her, he realised suddenly that her anger had to have a deeper meaning, and the pieces slowly began to align themselves.

'There's something you're not telling me,' he said. As Lisbon's eyes skirted to the floor, he stepped forward until they were only a few inches apart and he was able to gently tilt her chin up with his thumb. She refused to look at him, but even in her diverted gaze he could see fear.

'It won't change anything,' she mumbled.

'You don't know that,' he assured her, but under the surface he sensed that they'd both called the lie. Nevertheless, he felt her neck swell and then deflate against his thumb as she swallowed, mustering her courage, and all of a sudden she was staring him straight in the eye and there was nothing in between them. The moment she opened her mouth was the moment that the pieces in Jane's mind came together.

'I'm pregnant.'

His hand dropped from her face, and within an instant the feeling in his fingers faded, and up his arms, through his body, until he was completely numb save for an emotion that could not decide whether it was shock or anger, or both. Jane slowly stepped backward and the hurt on her face made him regret it immediately: without meaning to, his eyes drifted down to her stomach where he imagined a tiny life form growing, a thought which only made everything worse. He wanted to say something to her, anything, but he found himself incapable of grasping anything that would pass for a word, let alone a sentence.

And so, silence won, and as he dazedly traipsed out of her office a furious war began inside his head, two futures laid out to be appraised, black and white possibilities if ever there were. Jane led himself past a curious Rigsby and dropped onto his couch with the grey realisation that whatever he did, he was going to hurt someone: closing his eyes, he suspended all thought of Red John momentarily to the side and thought only of Lisbon. He began to recall more and more observations from that fateful night-the smell of her, the feeling of their toes intertwined-and suddenly, the image of a dark-haired little girl, blue-eyed, staring up at him from her arms, and Lisbon's soft smile sending a warmth over his skin…

But then he stopped. And he thought of Red John.

Abruptly, the warmth evaporated to a sweeping cold darkness which took every memory he had of Lisbon and replaced them with Ange and Charlie, their lifeless bodies looked over by that mocking red smile, and Jane no longer felt anything else but his own rage. It burned so painfully that he had to place a hand over his stomach to keep the anger from bursting out, and it dawned on him with a sinister resignation that his need for revenge was never going to leave on its own. His night spent in Lisbon's bed had not been the beginning of something new, but rather a comfort in the face of the something he already had, and there would never be anything else until he could first let go of his past. And if he stayed, attempted to lead two lives at once, the darkness would only become more and more powerful until it tore out of him and destroyed whatever family they'd been able to build.

He had to go, so that later he'd be able to stay.

Jane stood and stepped over to the computer that was supposedly his, though he'd barely used it in his life, and began to search for a cheap flight to London. Reassuring himself, though he loathed it, that it was the only decision he could ever really have made. However, as the minutes trailed on his actions became less and less certain, and when Van Pelt saw his screen and gasped from behind him he stopped typing completely, and closed his eyes. Sitting completely still was the only thing he could think of to do that didn't hurt anyone. In the space of ten minutes, all his noble reasons had deserted him and he'd fallen from clarity back to mental chaos, back to square one, with the memory of Lisbon's hurt expression dancing in his mind's eye, and his self-hatred increasing by the second.

But when he opened his eyes, the transaction was complete-he was flying to England at five thirty, whether he regretted it or not.

Jane spent the next four hours outside his body, watching himself drive home and pack a full suitcase, frozen between keeping silent and stepping forward to shake himself by the shoulders and yell, 'what are you _doing_?' In equal measures, he wanted to pretend that he wasn't going but he also wanted to consider his first moves after he stepped off the plane in London. After all, the intention was not only to pass Red John's test but to beat him at his own fatal game.

When it came to be four thirty, he shook the hands of both Cho and Rigsby and let Grace throw her arms around his neck with a soft 'good luck' in his ear. Lisbon had not emerged from her office since their last conversation, and so Jane trudged alone to the elevator, wishing more than anything for things to be different.

As he pushed the button on the wall, there was movement behind him.

'Please don't go,' she murmured, and when he turned he not only saw her but that same imaginary little girl, standing with her arms around Lisbon's left leg and her wide blue eyes looking up at him. When Jane blinked, the illusion was gone but its confronting meaning remained-if he left, he would miss _everything_. The pregnancy, the birth, perhaps even the early years. The beginning. And for what? Becoming a twice murderer, avenging people who-though precious-didn't exist anymore?

Yes, he was, and he didn't expect her to understand that it was for her sake as well as his. But they couldn't end over a decade of working together with this agonising silence: he couldn't simply disappear without leaving some of himself behind, so that she'd know he was coming back.

'I'm not leaving forever,' he told her.

'How do you know?' Lisbon spread her hands in exasperation. 'Who says he's going to come back to the States? You could spend the rest of your _life_ chasing him all over the world. It might never stop.' For the first time, Jane noticed the utter helplessness in her eyes and felt the edges of his heart tear apart: and suddenly, against the will of his dark side, an idea occurred to him.

'Are you keeping the baby?' His question surprised her.

'I don't know yet,' she replied after a moment, but he knew that she would. Having another relative taken away from her was not something she would willingly put herself through.

'If Red John isn't caught in eight months,' he heard himself say, 'I'll come back. I'll be there for the birth.' There was immediate disbelief in her expression, which he understood, not knowing whether he'd be able to give up the chase if the time came to choose. The lure of vengeance was a near impossible thing for him to resist, but he had to at least try. He had to give them both some sort of hope.

'You'd give it all up,' she stated, almost a question, almost sarcasm. Jane nodded firmly, but inside he could already feel the weight of his words hanging over him like a conscience.

'I promise,' he said, and hoped that in eight months time he would be brave enough to keep it.

* * *

><p>Lisbon hadn't believed him for a second. She'd known Jane long enough to be able to tell when he was uncertain, even when he thought he was hiding it, and so didn't take his words as a promise but as a simple representation of the fact that he'd tried.<p>

She'd considered abortion, but only until she re-counted the number of people death had already banished from her life, and promptly refused to add to the list. Of the next eight months, however, she would remember most clearly not morning sickness or the slow expansion of her stomach, but watching the news religiously for any news at all on Red John. During her seventh pregnant month (in which she'd eaten her supermarket entirely out of yoghurt) smiley faces had been painted in two houses-one in France, the other in Ireland-and at two thirty in the morning she'd watched a news feature on the investigation. She'd heard his voice-distinctly American and so very familiar among the European accents-immediately turned off the TV, and sat there in the dark for a long time, truly certain for the first time that he wouldn't be coming back.

Lisbon wasn't all that sure what she'd expected him to do, when she told him he would be a father again. But she couldn't bring herself to judge him for his shock, seeing as her reaction had been to throw the pregnancy test hard against the wall, and then spend three hours at the shooting range. She couldn't really blame him for leaving, either: after all, he had lived and breathed the footsteps of Red John for over a decade, and such a path could not simply be turned away from. He had another family to care about, despite that they were dead, and she'd long since accepted that this left no room in his heart for anyone new.

So she went to the ultrasounds and saw the pulsing heartbeat on the screen, the tiny life accompanying her everywhere, and yet felt more alone than she'd ever been.

* * *

><p>On the day that she progressed from pregnant to mother, Lisbon found herself introduced to a new level of pain beyond anything she'd ever thought possible, an agony the drugs did nothing to save her from. She had the briefest moment of painlessness-in which she wondered whether God hated her, whether Hell was filled not with fire and pitchforks but with women forever in labour-before the feeling of being torn open from the inside continued, and she could think no more. In the corner of the room one of the nurses had turned on a television to calm her, but suddenly a red smiley face caught the corner of her eye. Immediately she turned her head, drenched in sweat, to discover that Red John had killed again-this time in Sweden.<p>

'Turn it _OFF_!' she shrieked suddenly, and one of the nurses almost dived for the remote. A small part of Lisbon was well aware that she was being a horrible patient, but the torture had made her blind and the sudden reminder of _him_ only made everything worse, only convinced her more that she would rather take a thousand bullets than continue to be cut in half.

'You've got to keep pushing, Teresa,' she heard as if from a distance. 'Just once more, the baby's half out.'

'I can't…I don't want…' Lisbon didn't want to have the baby anymore, wanted it gone, wanted it never conceived in the first place. Boy or girl, whether it looked like him or not, it would always serve as nothing but a reminder of the hollow promise he failed to keep and the moments he missed. As the pain surged once more, she threw her head back and screamed louder than she ever had before, hearing nothing but her own voice, feeling nothing but the breaking of her own lower body. And so it was that Lisbon didn't hear the swinging open of the door or the pressing footsteps, didn't know a thing until suddenly she was gripping a hand, not the edge of the bed, and gentle fingers were pushing strands of hair back from her face.

At first, she thought he was an illusion, but then one of the nurses asked him wearily, 'can you please explain to her that one push is not going to deliver a baby?' Jane turned to her, leant forward until she was the only one who could hear him and told her simply, 'Lisbon, you're being lazy.' The statement was so arrogant, so utterly condescending that her first instinct was to punch him, but simultaneously it also gave her the strength to deliver the very last push, grasping his hand like it was the only thing holding her to the world. One last shout, one last rush of pain and then the pain was gone, all gone, and a high-pitched cry pierced the air. As Lisbon fought to get her breathing back, Jane tenderly pressed a kiss to her forehead and uttered a soft 'well done' in her ear: in any other moment, she would have been irritated by the fact that he'd known exactly what to say, but now she felt only pure disbelief as she looked at their still entwined fingers, and then back up to him.

'You're here,' she voiced stupidly.

'I promised,' was his gentle reply, as if it were an obvious thing.

'Oh,' she said, because she didn't know what else to say, and almost began to hope but then she remembered the television report only five minutes ago. No longer able to look at him, she studied the edge of the bed and asked quietly, 'when are you leaving for Sweden?'

'I'm not.' When she snapped her gaze back up to meet him, he was smiling.

'But, Red John is there, he's…'

'I don't care.' He breathed in deeply. 'Chasing someone invisible,' he told her, 'you eventually learn to see past them.' Their conversation from the day he left floated back to her, and all of a sudden there was a lump in Lisbon's throat, an almost suffocating pressure on her heart that grew more with each moment she allowed herself to hope. Jane had kept an unkeepable promise. Vaguely, she supposed that there had been bigger miracles than this in the world but decided in the very same instant that she really didn't give a damn about the others.

'Congratulations, Teresa,' smiled a nurse, 'meet your daughter.' She had barely registered the words before there was a wet, slippery little girl in her arms, wrapped partially in a blanket. As Lisbon watched, her eyes flickered open to reveal pools of pure blue, distant with the blindness of a newborn. Carefully, she reached down to run a gentle line from the baby's elbow to her hand, and the delicate fingers closed around her thumb like flower petals.

And suddenly the lump in her throat was too large, and the pressure on her heart too great: the tears began to fall down her cheeks like rain on a window, and when she finally glanced over to Jane he was closer than she remembered, and he was crying too.

One day, she assumed, this weightlessness would fade just enough for her to touch the ground and remember how much she hated him for leaving. And they would finish the fight they began eight months ago in her office, eventually piecing back together their dysfunctionality but this time with a dark-haired, blue-eyed daughter along for the ride, the best of both of them.

It was a day that never came.

* * *

><p><strong>Thanks for reading! My goal from the beginning for this was 55 reviews, so if I get those last four I will be ecstatic, seriously, and I will be literally tracking you all down and hugging you all.<strong>

**Oh, and I'm curious to know, if you've read every chapter, or even just a couple (I honestly don't blame you if you haven't, there's a fair few) I'd really like to know which one was your favourite and why. Curiosity of a writer.**

**TAJ :)**


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